Editing Cybele (section)

=== Republican era ===
[[File:Toulouse - Musée Saint-Raymond - inv 31001 - 20101022.jpg|thumb|Votive altar inscribed to ''Mater Deum'', the Mother of the Gods, from southern Gaul<ref>''[[Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum|CIL]]'' 12.5374.</ref>]]
Romans knew Cybele as ''Magna Mater'' ("Great Mother"), or as ''Magna Mater deorum Idaea'' ("great Idaean mother of the gods"), equivalent to the Greek title ''Meter Theon Idaia'' ("Mother of the Gods, from Mount Ida"). Rome officially adopted her cult during the [[Second Punic War]] (218 to 201 BC), after dire [[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#prodigium|prodigies]], including a meteor shower, a failed harvest, and famine, seemed to warn of Rome's imminent defeat. The [[Roman Senate]] and its [[Quindecimviri sacris faciundis|religious advisers]] consulted the [[Sibylline Books|Sibylline oracle]] and decided that Carthage might be defeated if Rome imported the ''Magna Mater'' ("Great Mother") of Phrygian Pessinos.<ref>{{harvnb|Beard|1994|page=168}}, following Livy 29, 10 – 14 for Pessinos (ancient Galatia) as the shrine from which she was brought. Varro's ''Lingua Latina'', 6.15 has [[Pergamum]]. Ovid Fasti 4.180–372 has it brought directly from Mt. Ida. For discussion of problems attendant on such precise claims of origin, see Tacaks, in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|pages=370–373}}.</ref> As this cult object belonged to a Roman ally, the [[Kingdom of Pergamon|Kingdom of Pergamum]], the Roman Senate sent ambassadors to seek the king's consent; en route, a consultation with the [[Pythia|Greek oracle at Delphi]] confirmed that the goddess should be brought to Rome.<ref>Boatwright et al., ''The Romans, from Village to Empire'' {{ISBN|978-0-19-511875-9}}</ref> The goddess arrived in Rome in the form of Pessinos' black meteoric stone. Roman legend connects this voyage, or its end, to the matron [[Claudia Quinta]], who was accused of unchastity but proved her innocence with a miraculous feat on behalf of the goddess. [[Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica (consul 191 BC)|Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica]], supposedly the "best man" in Rome, was chosen to meet the goddess at [[Ostia Antica (archaeological site)|Ostia]]; and Rome's most virtuous matrons (including [[Quinta Claudia|Claudia Quinta]]) conducted her to the [[Temple of Victory|temple of Victoria]], to await the completion of her temple on the [[Palatine Hill]]. Pessinos' stone was later used as the face of the statue of the goddess.<ref>Summers, in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|pages=363–364}}: "a rather bizarre looking statue with a stone for a face", [[Prudentius]] describes the stone as small, and encased in silver.</ref> In due course, the famine ended and [[Hannibal]] was defeated.

[[File:Tetradrachm Smyrna 160-150 obverse CdM Paris.jpg|thumb|left|Silver tetradrachm of Smyrna]]
Most modern scholarship agrees that Cybele's consort, [[Attis]], and her eunuch Phrygian priests ([[Galli]]) would have arrived with the goddess, along with at least some of the wild, ecstatic features of her Greek and Phrygian cults. The histories of her arrival deal with the piety, purity, and status of the Romans involved, the success of their religious stratagem, and power of the goddess herself; she has no consort or priesthood, and seems fully Romanised from the first.<ref>{{harvnb|Beard|1994|pages=168, 178 – 9}}. See also Summers, in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|pages=357–359}}. Attis' many votive statuettes at Cybele's Roman temple are evidence of his early, possibly private Roman cult.</ref> Some modern scholars assume that Attis must have followed much later; or that the Galli, described in later sources as shockingly effeminate and flamboyantly "un-Roman", must have been an unexpected consequence of bringing the goddess in blind obedience to the Sibyl; a case of "biting off more than one can chew".<ref>{{harvnb|Beard|1994|page=177}}, citing Vermaseren, M.J., ''Cybele and Attis: the myth and the cult'', Thames and Hudson, 1977, p. 96.</ref> Others note that Rome was well versed in the adoption (or sometimes, [[Glossary of ancient Roman religion#evocatio|the "calling forth", or seizure]]) of foreign deities,<ref>Several major Greek deities were adopted by Rome at about this time, including the Greek gods [[Aesclepius]] and [[Apollo]]. A version of [[Demeter]]'s [[Thesmophoria]] was incorporated within the Roman cults to [[Ceres (mythology)|Ceres]] at around the same; Greek priestesses were brought to run the cult "for the benefit of the Roman state".</ref> and the diplomats who negotiated Cybele's move to Rome would have been well-educated, and well-informed.<ref>Takacs, in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|page=373}}, remarks that to presume Roman ignorance of the cult's true nature "makes Roman nobles look like buffoons, which they hardly were".</ref> 

Romans believed that Cybele, considered a Phrygian outsider even within her Greek cults, was the mother-goddess of ancient [[Troy]] (Ilium). Some of Rome's leading [[Patrician (ancient Rome)|patrician]] families claimed Trojan ancestry; so the "return" of the Mother of all Gods to her once-exiled people would have been particularly welcome, even if her spouse and priesthood were not; its accomplishment would have reflected well on the principals involved and, in turn, on their descendants.{{sfn|Roller|1999|page=282}} The upper classes who sponsored the Magna Mater's festivals delegated their organisation to the [[Aediles|plebeian aediles]], and honoured her and each other with lavish, private festival banquets from which her Galli would have been conspicuously absent.<ref>Summers, in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|pages=337–339}}.</ref> Whereas in most of her Greek cults she dwelt outside the ''polis'', in Rome she was the city's protector, contained within her Palatine precinct, along with her priesthood, at the geographical heart of Rome's most ancient religious traditions.<ref>In Roman tradition, the she-wolf who found Romulus and Remus sheltered them in her lair on the Palatine, the [[Lupercal]]. See also {{harvnb|Roller|1999|page=273}}</ref> She was promoted as patrician property; a Roman matron – albeit a strange one, "with a stone for a face" – who acted for the clear benefit of the Roman state.<ref>{{harvnb|Roller|1999|pages=282–285}}. For statue description, see Summers, in {{harvnb|Lane|1996|pages=363–364}}.</ref><ref>cf the Roman response in 186 BC to the popular, unofficial, ecstatic [[Bacchanalia]] cults (originating as festivals to [[Dionysus]], similar in form to Cybele's Greek cults), [[Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus|suppressed]] with great ferocity by the Roman state, very soon after the official introduction of Cybele's cult.</ref>

[[File:Cybele formiae.jpg|thumb|upright|1st century BC marble statue of Cybele from [[Formia]], [[Lazio]]]]